Siler City, NC – Mountaire Farms will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of their signature holiday giving event – Thanksgiving for Thousands – this weekend where hundreds of employees and volunteers will gather to pack 38,000 complete meals for families in need.
“We continue to be so blessed to be able to partner with our local communities to make this event possible,” said JR LaPearl, the Director of Mountaire Cares, the charitable giving program at Mountaire. “We couldn’t do this without our volunteers, and our partners in the faith-based and non-profit world. They are the real heroes in getting these boxes into the hands of families who need them.”
Events will be held on Saturday, November 23, at four locations including Siler City, Selbyville, Lumber Bridge, and Stateville.
The Siler City event will take place from 7:30 am to 12:30 pm in the Mountaire employee parking lot at 1151 East Raleigh Street. Volunteers are scheduled to pack and distribute 9,000 boxes.
All boxes contain a plump Mountaire roaster chicken, canned corn, green beans, cranberry sauce, yams, stuffing, gravy, and a brownie mix. It’s designed to feed a family of four. Mountaire partners with Redner’s Markets, a grocery store, and longtime Mountaire customer, that provides all the shelf-stable food for the event.
All boxes have been reserved by hundreds of churches and non-profit organizations that distribute them that day to in the communities in and around Mountaire. (No walk-up distributions at packing locations are offered.)
The program began in 1994 when a local church in Dagsboro, Del., could no longer accommodate the 100 hungry people it fed every holiday with the help of Mountaire chicken. They simply were running out of room. It was decided a boxed meal system could feed more families in need, and with Mountaire’s help, the Thanksgiving for Thousands program was born. That first year, 300 boxes were packed and distributed. And it has grown steadily ever since.